Skins: Season Two, "Michelle" and "Chris"

Series Two, Episode Four, “Michelle”

It’s hard to buy Michelle and Sid’s anguished feelings over their current relationships with Tony. It requires us to ignore a lot of dark personal history from last season. The show is using the bus accident to wipe the slate clean with the character. 

And even if we do accept it, Michelle and Sid’s behavior (and that of the rest of the characters more broadly) has been overly insensitive. We’re supposed to read this as the narcissism and selfishness of adolescence (We know that Michelle, in particular, is a an incredibly selfish character, but a lot of this is due to faux-superficiality). But it still rings a little bit falsely. It feels too much like the writers trying to goose up drama where it no longer exists.

After all, the show already resolved the tension arising from Sid’s feelings towards Michelle. Pushing the two characters together feels like insincere backtracking. The relationship looks desperate, a sad coping mechanism rather than a worthwhile partnership. But, on some level, the show wants us to take this relationship seriously. It’s doomed to fail out of narrative necessity but there’s real emotion there. 

Of course, that’s just a very small portion of “Michelle”, an episode that feels like a back-to-basics story after the early, somewhat adventurous outings of the beginning of the season (Along with the last episode “Sid”, although that was surprisingly more dramatic than typical Skins-fare). It’s back to the wacky comedy and searing pathos that the show does best, and not the structural gambits of the first two episodes. 

The episode is the closest Skins could get to doing a sitcom episode without becoming a full-on sitcom. Even the central conflict between Michelle and her new step-sister and its “We’re not so different you and I” resolution feels like something from a TGIF comedy (a lot of the business at the beach especially the camping-related mishaps reads like this). Michelle’s step-sister does serve as a nice (if especially obvious) foil to Michelle. She’s, as Michelle assesses, “not really a bitch”, but pretending to be one because she believes she needs to be and everyone has come to anticipate that from her. Michelle (by design) might as well be talking about herself.

Grade: B

Series Two, Episode Five, “Chris”

Trying to manage the balance between the persona we project and the inner person that hides is a theme that continues into this episode. This is true of the episode’s focal point Chris, but also of his foil and partner-in-crime Jal, as well as Cassie. The two relationships the episode establishes between Chris and Jal, and Chris and Cassie are important for the season going forward and simply two of the more effective, well-realized character pairings. 

Chris is expelled from school and kicked out of the on-school housing. This should be devastating news. But, in his typical carefree way, Chris shrugs it off as if it’s no big deal. The story that follows really isn’t that strong. Chris uses career services to get a job selling houses, but this comedic business is broad and silly. 

What is strong is Chris’s budding romance with Jal. Jal and Chris are such polar-opposites that they bring out the best of both characters and actors. It helps that Joseph Dempsie and Larissa Wilson have enormous chemistry. They light up in eachother’s presence.

It also helps that the characters aren’t burdened with the star-crossed lover narratives of Sid, Cassie, Michelle and Tony (particularly Sid and Cassie). Their relationship is natural and believable and builds off previous character development and interactions. It’s also a healthy relationship, which contrasts starkly with all the other relationships. The two push the other to be the best possible version of themselves, which is the ultimate purpose of a good relationship. 

They’re also well-paired for reasons that might not have been immediately obvious but that the episode plainly spells out. Both have been abandoned by parents. However, how they’ve reacted to this trauma has been vastly different. Chris has taken a self-destructive path, while Jal has steeled herself. As Jal points out, lots of people have experienced what Chris has; that doesn’t give him an excuse to constantly fuck-up (as he severely does here by hooking up with *sigh* Angie – I thought we were done with her too). 

The episode doesn’t go into this but Cassie suffers from similar past trauma. Her parents have been so neglectful as to be essentially a non-presence. Her self-destructive streak isn’t all that different from Chris’s, as she copes by sleeping around and doing drugs. We like to believe our problems are unique and special but that frequently isn’t the case. That doesn’t diminish the importance of them, but it also doesn’t excuse bad behavior and a lousy attitude.  

Grade: B+

Stray Observations:

-The final scenes on the beach are pretty gorgeous, especially Sid and Michelle silhouetted against the sunrise. 

-The broken watch is an obvious symbol even by Skins's standards.

-I love Jal interrogating Tony, Sid, Maxxie, and Chris in the bar. The normal friend having to put up with the ridiculous drama of her outsized friends. 

-Cassie’s toxic behavior would be despicable if the show hadn’t already done so much work already to make her a sympathetic and tragic figure. 

-I’m not sure how being a real estate agent works over in England, but I have to imagine it requires having a license to perform. 

-Jal buys Chris’s argument to win her back a little too easily. Yes, she is pregnant with his child, but that doesn’t excuse his terrible behavior.

-I’m assuming that’s Larissa Wilson’s actual tattoo that we see here because I don’t really buy the character of Jal getting a tattoo like that.